


A lesson in restraint

by brittlestars



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 4.18, A visit with Dr. Hallway, Gen, Implied Harrisco but Joe really doesn’t want to think too hard on that right now, It's a porn-y title but this is about feels, Protective Joe West, Your daily reminder that Cisco Ramon is a hugely powerful metahuman just coming into his powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 18:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlestars/pseuds/brittlestars
Summary: Cisco isn't able to speak up for himself after being attacked by Harry, but Joe sees enough to understand what's going on and to get angry about it.>>4x18 reaction fic, inspired in part by thoughts and reactions on Tumblr from lonelywalker and aquaexplicit (and others who apparently don't have AO3 accounts?).





	A lesson in restraint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lonelywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/gifts), [aquaexplicit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquaexplicit/gifts).



After making sure Cisco was out of earshot, Joe stalked down the hall after Harry. “Are you out of your mind?”

Harry paused, half-turning and causing Joe to pull up short. He shifted the damned Cap to rest on his hip. He said nothing, simultaneously disgruntled and expectant.

“Cisco could have killed you!”

Harry’s brow furrowed as he narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Man grabs him, throws him against the wall, threatens a chokehold? A man _with your face_?”

“Ramon and I… have worked past that.”

Joe suspected ‘working past that’ might have something to do with omelettes, with walking out of the shower, but brushed the thought aside. He had too much of a headache right now to also try and wrap his head around Cisco’s relationship - working or other - with someone who, at least in appearance, had literally killed him.

“I don’t get the science, but you do. His powers could breach you into, I don’t know, the sun, before he even realized he’d done it. If he’d lashed out in self-defense you wouldn’t’ve stood a chance.”

“He didn’t.”

“And if his controlled slipped for even a second, without meaning to--”

“--I don’t have time for baseless hypotheticals.” Harry started back down the hallway.

“You attacked him, Harry,” Joe intoned. ”Cisco - he lets things get to him. He’s fragile.”

Harry’s back went stiff. Slowly, he turned on his heel. “Fragile?” He shook his head, and there was that anger rising fast, burning intensity. “You mistake Ramon’s compassion for weakness, his heart for lack of restraint.”

Harry scoffed. “Cisco’s ten times the man either of us will ever be. For instance, I don’t recall him shooting an unarmed civilian on sight.”

Joe winced, but Harry pressed on, stepping to Joe’s space. “Devoe would kill him.” He jabbed the Thinking Cap into Joe’s shoulder. “I won’t let that happen.”

Joe reached for the Cap, but Harry ripped it from his grasp and continued, words low and fast and fierce like he was biting them from the air. “I won’t let that happen because Cisco is the kind of man who doesn’t attack without consideration, even in self-defense.

“This Cap is the only thing capable of saving him - of saving all of them. Your son, the hero, will throw himself at the brick wall of Devoe’s intellect until he’s dead. And Cisco will follow like a damned puppy. You want to see your kids safe? So do I. Let me do my job.” The last words were a strangled whisper, edged in manic hysteria.

Joe’s gaze turned inward. He inhaled deeply and then spoke with measured patience. This was a gamble, and he could only hope Harry was too distracted to read the emotional play he was about to make. “I understand wanting to protect them, Harry. I get that. But Cisco’s only recently becoming confident in his powers. If your actions caused him to hurt you, even accidentally…”

Joe let the implication stretch before concluding, “He already thinks HR was his fault.”

“No one’s dying today. Not on my watch.” Harry tried to brush past him, but Joe stepped in the way once more.

“You love Jesse. And you did save her. But then she left when you killed Turtle.” Wells’s shoulders dropped, but Joe kept pressing. “Cisco won’t leave - he didn’t leave then and he won’t now. And he doesn’t want to fight back, even with you attacking him. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t hurt him, one way or the other. If I hadn’t shown up in the lab a minute ago, then what? You keep beating him?”

Harry didn’t move. Joe leaned in. The men’s eyes were locked, hard. “Tell me, Harrison, if I had come in just three minutes later, which one of you would have been unconscious on the floor?”

There was no good answer to that question.

“You killed Turtle for your daughter and almost lost her for it. What I saw, back there? The panic in his eyes? You could have been a hairsbreadth from turning Cisco into the next killer on this team.”

“I--”

“--You know the Cap’s twisting you. You think you’re sacrificing yourself, your amazing brain, for Cisco and the rest of us, but you’re not. You are addicted, Harry, and it’s making you a liability. This team, we need you. You, not some souped-up, brain-addled version of you. Stop trying to take some tragic fall, because the real tragedy is that it won’t be on the shoulders of your past mistakes alone. You’ll burn us all with you.”

Harry swallowed. His fingers curled reflexively around the edges of the Thinking Cap, knuckles white.

Then his fingers uncurled. He nodded once, slowly. “I am reminded once again,” he said, “where Barry and Wallace learned to be such upstanding heroes.”

“Please, your kid is every inch the hero mine are. And,” Joe paused, “if Jesse were here, she’d be giving you a piece of her mind about that Cap.”

Harry couldn’t suppress a small smile, rueful but also proud. “That she certainly would.”

Joe felt tension draining from his shoulders. He nodded and then pointed a single finger at Harry. “Don’t expect this to blow over by ignoring it. You need to apologize to Cisco, both for bullying him into working on the Cap and for attacking him. And don’t expect to get yourself back into his good graces without honest effort. How he’s still got that heart of gold, I don’t know, but you’re not doing yourself any favors with that Cap.”

A pause, and then Joe murmured to himself, “Why we went against Cisco’s better judgment as a psychic, I’ll never understand…”

Harry exhaled through his nose abruptly. “Ramon is not psychic, it’s multiversal, transdimensional energy awareness and manip--” he began,

“--whatever,” Joe said, unimpressed. “The point stands: ditch the Cap, apologize to Cisco. Then let’s get Devoe.”

“Agreed.”

“Good.”

Joe stalked away, leaving Harry in the dim corridor, alone with the Thinking Cap.


End file.
